Heroes of March The ’10s

Sadly, Dunk City is not a real place. But for a week in 2013, we all wanted to live there.

Florida Gulf Coast didn't have the longest NCAA Tournament run. They didn't have the most improbable upset, they didn't have the most ridiculous buzzer-beater, and they certainly weren't the best team. What FGCU did do was prove that with enough swagger and just enough basketball success at the right time, anybody's name can go down in history.

The Eagles beat Georgetown and San Diego State to become the first 15-seed to make the Sweet 16. But it's not just that they beat those two teams. It's the way they did it. FGCU didn't win the way underdogs win. They made themselves feel like the favorites going in, they played like favorites, and then they dunked on their opponents, both literally and spiritually. They came out smiling and dancing, while their opponents looked like embarrassed, bewildered ghosts.

What made Florida Gulf Coast so great is that nobody had ever seen the words "Florida Gulf Coast" before. Even amongst directional school names, "Florida Gulf Coast" sounds kinda made up, and in a way, it kind of was. While their first round opponent, Georgetown, was founded in 1789, FGCU was founded in 1997.

Academic folks hadn't heard of FGCU, whose most famous alumni were a few MLB players and a beauty queen-turned-monster truck driver. College basketball folks hadn't heard of FGCU, which had only become fully eligible for the NCAA Tournament for one year prior to their tourney run.

The Eagles didn't seem to mind the idea that they were facing long odds. Their coach, Andy Enfield, was a prime example of this. The NCAA's all-time free throw percentage record holder, Enfield worked as an executive at a software startup before his time as FGCU's coach. Once he met a former bikini model and took her on a first date that included an NIT game and ended at a Taco Bell. He married this person. If you can turn a NIT basketball and Taco Bell into holy matrimony, you can turn anything into anything.

What he did in 2013 was turn a team that finished second in the Atlantic Sun into a team that believed it could and should beat one of the best teams in college basketball. Georgetown in 2013 had Otto Porter, months away from being the No. 3 pick in the NBA Draft, and the second-most efficient defense in college basketball, allowing just 88.5 points per 100 possessions.

So far as I can tell, FGCU's gameplan was to a) play fast and b) dunk a lot. This is the worst gameplan ever. Going up-tempo against a perceived superior opponent is generally a bad idea, because it gives a better team more opportunities to prove they are better. Attempting to dunk on an excellent defensive team is generally a bad idea, because excellent defensive teams are generally good at guarding pretty much everything, and a dunk generally requires a major defensive breakdown.

It worked. FGCU didn't just beat Georgetown, they blew them the hell out. The 81-71 scoreline is not indicative of how thoroughly FGCU walloped the Hoyas. In a game they were expected to lose big, they led by as much as 19, their biggest lead of course coming on a big Chase Fieler dunk. Porter shot just 5-for-17, while Sherwood Brown and Bernard Thompson each scored over 20 points.

This win would've been enough. There had only been six 15-over-2 upsets in NCAA Tournament history, and most of them weren't triumphant as what FGCU had just done. But the Eagles weren't finished.

Next up was San Diego State, a 7-seed that wasn't expected to beat Georgetown, but was still a huge favorite over a 15-seed. Again, it was a team primarily focused on defense, and again, FGCU smiled while slamming on them. In spite of their second consecutive mismatch, FGCU played SDSU evenly for most of the game, and the Eagles held a slim 54-52 lead with 10 minutes left.

Then it came time to start dunking again. The Eagles scored 17 consecutive points to take another 19-point lead against a team expected to beat them. And again, it was capped by a big dunk, this time an alley-oop from Brett Comer to Eric McKnight. The Eagles were the 15th-best team in their region, according to the NCAA, but according to the teams left standing after two rounds, they were one of the best 16 teams in the country.

FGCU would fall short against Florida in the Sweet 16, but nobody will remember that part. They'll remember the two triumphant dunkfests from a school nobody had never heard of.

As boring people will point out, a dunk is only worth two points on the scoreboard. But of course, it's worth so much more. Dunking on somebody is about stealing a little piece of their soul. It's about embarrassing them, letting them know that you scored in the most obvious way possible, that there was nothing they could do about it, that you had a great time and that you'd love to do it again.

When faced with two teams that should've presented insurmountable obstacles, FGCU opted to dunk on them. And that's why we'll remember them.

No, Dunk City is not a real place. But it is a state of mind. And we can live there if we really want to.